With over two billion copies of her books in print, British novelist Agatha Christie—who was born in September 1890—rivals the best. Here are some not-so-known details of the famed writer’s life.
Her mother was against her daughter learning how to read. Christie received formal education only after 15.
She wrote her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, on a dare. The novel introduced readers to Hercule Poirot and was rejected by six publishers.
During World War I, she worked as an apothecary’s assistant and handled a variety of poisons. Her interest led her to make poisons her preferred method of murder in many of her works.
Miss Marple was modelled on her maternal grandmother
She once famously described Poirot as a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. But because the public loved him, she refused to kill him off.
When he finally did die, the Belgian detective was given a full-page obituary in The New York Times
Christie’s famous play, The Mousetrap, began life as a 20-minute radio story. Almost seven decades on, it’s still being performed regularly. The play was written at the behest of Queen Mary in 1947.
Christie disliked marmalade pudding so much that she used it as a murder accessory in her novel, A Pocket Full of Rye.
She had something in common with Poirot—both suffered from seasickness
She makes an appearance in the David Tennant Doctor Who episode ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp’. Christie helps the Doctor solve a series of murders that parallel her works and the board game Clue(do).
She was averse to typing and would record her stories into a Dictaphone before having them typed
